A Smorgasbord of Shorts
by Merellia
Summary: A collection of near-100 word ficlets about Inuyasha et al.
1. I Have To Go

AN: all of the ficlets collected here were written for the 100-word challenge on the ID forums.  Sadly for my hopes, I don't think a single one actually makes it down to 100 words. 

I've posted them here in the order in which they were written, though they are all stand-alones, so that shouldn't make any difference.

I hope you enjoy them!

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I Have To Go

"I have to go," you said, brushing your lips against mine, moving back when I tried to make the kiss deeper, longer.  "Big exam in the morning."

I had stopped arguing about it; you never changed your mind and there was always the chance I might piss you off so badly you'd never return.  "I'll take you to the well."

"I have to go," you said, palm against my cheek.  The crows-feet at the corners of your eyes crinkled with your smile.  "Performance review coming up."

I never crossed through it anymore; the last time I'd been mistaken for your son.  It just seemed stupid to bother.  "I'll take you to the well."

"I have to go," you said, your hands with their thin skin crumpled on your breast like faded flowers.  You sighed, stilled.

"I'll take you to the well."


	2. Last Words

Last Words

"Your hair. . . ."  She touched it with fingertips, bewildered.  

"I made a wish," I said smugly. Let Sesshomaru have the damn sword.

"Inuyasha, why?" she pursued, kneeling beside me.

"I heard a barbarian tell a story in the marketplace."

"That's no kind of answer, Inuyasha."

I reached for her face.  I couldn't smell her as I used to, but I could feel her. I wanted to feel her.  "It was a story about a girl."

Her mouth was sweet.  The kiss would've been better if she hadn't insisted we keep talking.  "What about her?"

"Her best friend was leaving. She wanted to go, too."

"What happened?"

"She said, 'Don't tell me to leave you, or not to follow you, for where you go, I will go.'"  I sought her lips again.  "'Where you stay, I'll stay.'"  And again.  "'Your people will be my people.'" My thumbs brushed the wet from her cheeks. "'Where you die, I will die. And there will I be buried.'"

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AN: I couldn't resist this rip-off of the Biblical story of Ruth and Naomi, turned around for Inuyasha.  The Inuyasha series takes place some time after the Portuguese have made contact with Japan; one of the first kinds of Westerners to start making their way around the islands were the Jesuit missionaries who accompanied the sailors.


	3. Fall From Grace

Fall from Grace

"Fucking stupid...I don't know why you want me to wear these," Inuyasha grumbled, jerking his hand away from the scarlet pajama shirt when a claw snagged on the slick material. 

Kagome smiled, leaning back against the pillows. "It'll be fun to take them off." She flipped the coverlet down, patting the space beside her on the satin-sheeted bed invitingly. 

Inuyasha put his knees on the mattress, shifting his weight as he leaned toward Kagome, still grumbling. "Yours, sure. But I--shit!" 

Kagome scrambled upright, peering over the edge of the bed in dismay. "Inuyasha! Are you alright?" 

"Fucking stupid slippery--" Inuyasha spat before catching the look on Kagome's face. He closed his mouth slowly. After a pause, he said abruptly, "Why don't we just do it down here. Unless you _want me to fall off at the wrong moment." _


	4. Second Thoughts

Second Thoughts

Sesshomaru stroked the pelt worn over his shoulder, surveying the other two youkai with his customary expression of bored indifference.  "And which of us begins it?"

"I'm going first," Inuyasha snarled.  "I found the goddamn place, and I didn't invite _you_."

Kouga sneered in response.  "I go first. My pack's dead, thanks to him.  You just lost a bitch, and you've already got a new one."

"You fucking wimpy wolf, _I'm_ going to be the one to kill Naraku, and you can just suck his dead balls!  If I leave him any," Inuyasha added as an afterthought.

"Bite me, dog turd!"

"Um, guys?" Kagome interrupted tentatively.

"_What?_" Kouga and Inuyasha snapped in unison.

"Sesshomaru's already gone in."


	5. Nine and Sixty Ways

Nine and Sixty Ways

As a monk, I was taught to meditate daily, cultivating discipline and guiding my thoughts away from desire; desire is value for earthly things, and as such only leads to suffering.  I was also taught that meditation is enhanced through the contemplation of sutras, particularly those which focus on Buddha: we can perfect ourselves through his inspiration.

My favorite sutra is the kama sutra.

It describes nine ways of lying down together, four kinds of embraces, the eight places for kissing if you're conservative. There are eleven if you're not.  I'm not.

Meditation rarely leads my thoughts from desire, Sango.

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AN: This short was the inspiration for the Sango-Miroku scene in Chapter 11 of "To Catch a Falling Star."  The kama sutra made it to Japan before 1000 AD, if I recall correctly (I did some research to make sure that Miroku's knowledge of this would be plausible, but offhand I can't remember the exact year of the sutra's arrival; this is a guess from what I do recollect, and may well be wrong).  By the way, the title of this ficlet is not simply a crude sexual allusion! It has literary import of vast significance. Just kidding--well, almost.  I took the title from a poem by Rudyard Kipling called "In the Neolithic Age."  It ends with the admonishment that "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And every single one of them is right!"  The title not only seemed germane for the processes of writing fiction, but very appropriate for Miroku as well, who, I am sure, would most certainly agree with the statement when applied to sex.  If you like (and it's quite amusing, so well worth the time), you can read the poem online at 


	6. Waiting

Waiting

"Kagome. . . ." His touch conveyed all he couldn't find the words to say, stroking over her grayed hair and tucking loose strands behind her ear with the ease of habit, her head resting in his lap.

Thank the gods she didn't have a sharp nose; she'd smell the fear on him, the despair that clenched his gut and twisted his chest. But if she had been other than she was, maybe it wouldn't have come to this, this fading into senescence and the claims of mortality.  If they'd used the jewel differently. . . . Bile filled his mouth, bitter, only to be swallowed away when her mouth twitched with what might have been a smile she was too tired to produce fully.  "Not yet," she murmured, her words whispered so low that he struggled to catch them.  "I'm not leaving you yet."  When she fell into silence, he hunched over, pressing an ear to her chest, but her heartbeat had followed her already into the quiet and he could catch nothing.

*     *     *

She recognized him the first time she saw him, about her own age, yelling irately into his wrist unit with a brash disregard for all public disturbance laws as well as his own privacy.  "What the hell do you mean by that, assho--"  He broke off when he felt her gaze, fixing her with an annoyed glance. "Oi. Do I know you?"  An unspoken 'then why the fuck are you bothering me' hung ready to pounce on her expected 'no.'

She smiled at him, her heart lifting, his expression shifting from irritation to puzzlement.  "Not yet."

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AN: this ficlet arose from a conversation I was having with Merith and Saro about the various ways that all the characters in the series could die--whether poetically or harshly.  The kernel of this was my idea for Kagome's poetic death (the harsh one, just for your information, was going down in battle after seeing Inuyasha killed first), and Naraku in possession of all the shards.


	7. Birth, Life and Death

Birth, Life, and Death

Kagome cradled the bundle to her, gently nudging one plump, silk-soft cheek until seeking lips latched onto her nipple and began to suck with vigor. Warm against her back, Inuyasha enfolded them both with his arms; the children stood at their sides, Shunsho and Keioko perk-eared and shoulder-to-shoulder as usual, while Akemi's small fangs peeked over her lower lip as she bit down on it in breathless wonder. "He's so tiny," she marveled at last.  
"You weren't much bigger yourself, runt," Inuyasha said.  
Shunsho craned his neck to peer at his newest sibling in curiosity. "His eyes are open already, Mama. Akemi took forever to open hers."  
"Did not!"  
"Did too."  
"Did not!"  
"Did too!"  
Inuyasha's growl cut the incipient argument short as Kagome replied. "Yes." She smiled through the tears that filled her own eyes, tracing one finger along a small ear, pink and perfect as a seashell. "Human babies start with their eyes open."

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AN: I've been pondering and discussing, off and on, the topic of youkai aging patterns; this is partly an outgrowth of that (the baby's siblings will outlive him by some time), and partly from an attack of the cutes I had this weekend which I'm still attempting to work out of my system.  This ficlet may or may not find its way, eventually, into the "To Catch a Falling Star" continuity (though not in the story covered by that fic).  In the meantime a one-shot puppyfic is whimpering and begging for attention--although TCaFS has priority and is currently on the working slate, even though it's being annoying.


	8. Broken Circle

Broken Circle

The boy held his father's hand in his own, measuring his small palm against the bigger one. "'Tousan, will my hand be big like yours someday?"

"Most certainly," said his father. "And maybe even larger."

The child continued his study, scooting his palm up until the base of their fingers met. "'Tousan," he said next, "will my fingers be as long as yours?"

"Perhaps," said his father. "It's hard to judge things like that at times."

Lowering his hand, the boy turned the larger hand palm-up, tracing the broad, pale mark across the palm with a touch that made fingers spasm as if tickled. "Ne, 'tousan, that's a scar?" At his father's nod, he asked curiously, "Will I have one like that?"

"No," his father said, freeing his hand to gathering his son close. "You won't ever have that."

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AN:  Another progeny fic! Though, this time, it's the perverted houshi's.


	9. Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

Humanity is a blight, a putrid flaw of the mind, of the body, of the spirit. Humans themselves are no better, teeming in their filthy villages, living their squalid, miserable excuses of lives.  They have no true idea of how to gain power, how to use it, how to manipulate events to their own ends.  My own ends.  They're too distracted by their weaknesses. Hunger. Fear. Greed. Lust.  I reject them all. I detach them from my spirit, tear them from my skin, rip them from my heart.  Like the shikon no tama, I break humanity into fragments, and I refuse to take them back . . . except through their death.  Death is a purge and a scourge before which even humanity yields, and I make it my tool.

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AN: this ficlet is dedicated to Saro for noting that there weren't that many 100-word shorts about the evil villains.  I'm not entirely satisfied with the characterization here, simply because it specifies some motivations I don't entirely feel confident about; but on the whole I think it works.  Any suggestions for improvements or different takes on the character would be welcome, however!  The title is a reference to the novel by Joseph Conrad of the same name, where the narrator has the misfortune to be faced with a man whose evilness demonstrates a darker face to humanity.  For all that Naraku despises his heritage, as a hanyou he's still half-human, and he and Kurtz aren't so far apart in terms of their vileness, so I thought the reference fitting.


	10. The Makings of a Man

The Makings of a Man

Fucking them is okay, but I like killing them best.  

Father always told us that reason is the hallmark of a superior youkai.  When the asshole said we were the reason he was kicking us out, however, I decided that he was wrong. Strength is the hallmark of a superior youkai. I tested that out by killing him.  But it struck me then that perhaps a combination of the two would be even better.  Manten thought so as well.  So I find a nice little fucktoy--reason one--and Manten gets her hair--reason two--then we kill her, because, shit, you've got to eat sometime. Reason three. Oh, and fucking makes me hungry.

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AN: this again arose from Saro's comment about the villains, in combination with a recent discussion we had about the way youkai might age: if their lifespan is considerably longer than a human's, it's possible at some point they either stop growing, or their growth rate slows and lengthens.  It seems logical to me that, if it's the latter, it would happen around puberty--which might mean it could take 50 years or more to get from 13 to 19. It struck me that this might be an explanation for why there are so few adult humanoid youkai.  If a sizeable percentage turn out like Hiten and Manten, the survival rate has got to be exceedingly low.  Remembering what I was like as a teenager, I'd guess that other youkai probably kick them out and pick them off just to avoid the hormonal outbursts.


	11. Seven Little Shichinintai

Seven Little Shichinintai

Seven little Shichinintai with a passel of tricks,

One met a wolf and then there were six.

Six little zombies and deaths to contrive,

Poison played with poison: then there were five.

Five little Shichinintai with killing for a chore,

One blew himself apart and then there were four.

Four little zombies on a murdering spree,

A miko shot her arrow; then there were three.

Three little Shichinintai who had lots to do,

One got sliced by a fang and then there were two.

Two little zombies having no fun,

Brother fought brother and then there was one.

One little Shichinintai left all alone,

He turned to dust; then there were none.

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AN: totally filked from the poem 'Ten Little Indians,' of course.


	12. Teeth of the Dog That Bit You

Teeth of the Dog That Bit You  
  
Kaede stopped once she neared the God Tree, cautious as ever. Tossing the long tail of her dark hair behind her shoulder, she passed her eye over the hanyou, his face dead with the sleep cast over him by the sealing arrow. She'd not yet come to understand why her sister's arrow had not purified him from existence. At least this way, however, she could exact a little revenge of her own.  
  
There was a saying she had heard once. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In this case, a tooth for an eye. Several teeth. She had another rosary to make. 


End file.
